Yesterday we (well, I) asked the question of whether or not Team Coco would follow Conan O’Brien to his new show on TBS. Survey says… apparently so! The ratings are in and “Conan” did really, really well. So well, in fact, that he beat Leno, Letterman, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert in the all-important 18-49 demo. (Advertisers, and thereby network executives, only care about one demo, and that’ 18-49. Don’t ask me why. It’s not like 18-year-old have money to buy cars or anything like that.) Bottom line, TBS has a hit on its hands.
Probably the most impressive thing is that Conan managed to draw two-thirds of his Tonight Show debut numbers. When you consider the disparity between the number of people who have NBC and the number of people who have TBS it’s even more impressive.
I didn’t even know what channel TBS was last night, so I used DirecTV’s handy Smart Search feature. I still don’t know what channel TBS is, and it’s one day later.
Most of us here at CG liked what we saw. Greg said the show was “really good,” and I largely agreed. I mean, there’s a zero percent chance I’m going to sit through his interview with Tom Hanks tonight, but I’ll be there for the first 30 minutes.
All in all, a job well done for Conan & Crew.